


To Keep Those Moments

by Rinari7



Category: NCIS
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Photography, Tourism, with a touch of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 04:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10455429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinari7/pseuds/Rinari7
Summary: Gibbs hogged the camera in Paris, though she never saw him taking many pictures.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itbloomedforyourlittlegirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itbloomedforyourlittlegirl/gifts).



> This was spawned from itbloomedforyourlittlegirl's headcanon and was posted on Tumblr a while ago.  
> Finally posting this here, and thank you very much for the inspiration.

“Jethro Gibbs, give me the camera. It’s my turn to take some of the pictures now.”  
It was something she felt like she had said far too often in Paris, holding one hand out and giving him her exasperated look, head tilted to the side. For all he hung onto the thing, she couldn’t even recall having seen him use it that much.

There had been that bridge with all the locks on it – him smiling a little sheepishly when she met his eyes after that and he knew he’d been caught, though she wouldn’t tease him about it… And the exterior of the Holocaust memorial behind Notre Dame. He’d taken a couple of pictures of smaller churches, and snapped one when they’d seen a contingent of gendarmes in dress uniforms on horseback… But that was about it, so she wondered why he handed the camera over only reluctantly, with a half-teasing, “Don’t get enough of picture-taking on the job, Katie?” that hid something else she couldn’t quite pin down.

Really, who looks through the pictures they’ve taken while they’re still on vacation and in the middle of taking more? She can be excused for not realizing it. She’s surprised to realize that they’d gone through more than one memory card on the trip, though. She hadn’t taken that many pictures, she didn’t think, especially not considering the amount of time they’d spent in the hotel room as well…

His dinner is being kept warm in the oven, and she props her feet up on the coffee table and slides one of the memory cards into her laptop. The first several photos are ones she took – Notre Dame, the view from atop one of the church towers, a close-up of a gargoyle – and then come a few she remembered him taking, the memorial among them, and one she’d asked a sweet Asian girl to take of the both of them.  
He’d held her a little awkwardly in front of the camera, but he actually looks happy, his toothy smile a little less pained than the version of it she usually sees.

She’s surprised to recognize herself in the next one, turned away from the camera but recognizable nonetheless, brushing her fingers over one of the locks on the bridge.  
“K + J,” one of them had said, and it had made her heart skip a beat. Of course it wasn’t theirs, “1989” was etched on it, but she hoped that whoever they were, they were still happy together.

It’s not the last. In fact, more than half of the pictures are of her, oblivious to the camera – gazing up at the ceiling in the Pantheon, examining the rifles in the Musée de l'Armée, brushing her hair out of her face one particularly windy evening as they’d walked along the river, even sprawled over the bed fast asleep, moonlight from the window playing over the silk of her nightgown.

“I didn’t mean for you to see those.”

Kate glances up, startled, a little off-kilter. “Don’t sneak up on – what do you mean, you didn’t mean for me to see these?”

He shrugs off his blazer. “Didn’t really mean for anyone to see them.”

“Why take them then?”

“Because you looked beautiful.” He takes a deep breath, turning to look at her. “Because I wanted to be able to keep those moments. To remember them better. You don’t think you’ll need to until you do.”  
He’s gazing at her and yet he isn’t quite, and she knows it’s not just her he’s talking about, and her throat closes up a little.

“Jethro. I’m not going anywhere.”

He looks at her then. “I know.”

She doesn’t believe him, so she sets the laptop off to the side and stands, shorter than him in her fuzzy houseshoes. “I. Am not. Going. Anywhere.”

Brushing her thumbs over his cheeks, she pulls him down to kiss him, and maybe when they separate again she sees him doubt it just a little bit less. 


End file.
